ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: Bill Murray

Ask a question of Bill Murray and he will dutifully respond with an answer, but attached to it will likely be an anecdote that may take the conversation off track for a bit. It's best to just be patient.

Murray held court at a press conference in Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel last week to discuss his performance as the mayor in the new film "City of Ember," a fantasy picture about an underground city that suffers crippling blackouts.

Seated next to Murray was his co-star Tim Robbins, who having grown up in New York City has lived through both the blackouts of 1977 and 2002. But not so Bill Murray.

"I'm from the Midwest, so we don't have anything like that there," he said. "I missed all the big blackouts, but I was in a pretty good-sized hurricane that came a few years ago and the power went out in my neighborhood."

Here we go.

"All the power went out except for this alarm system I have in the house. And it has backup batteries; the batteries will still sound the alarm. But because the company that services it is about 60 miles away I was the last person on their list. So I left my home, and moved to the Plaza Hotel, New York City. And they gave us the Presidential Suite, which is kind of funny because, you know, it's the same architect who built my house as built the Presidential Suite in the Plaza Hotel," said Murray.

SEEING GHOSTS?
There are serious efforts under way to produce a sequel to "Ghostbusters," which Murray starred in in 1984. This would actually be the second sequel to that comedy classic; Murray appeared in the first one, in 1989, and hasn't been keen to go there again. But this time could be different.

"The original sequel was rather unsatisfying for me, because the first one to me was the goods. There was an idea pitched, and it was like, well, they got us all together in a room. We just laughed for a couple of hours," said Murray.

"There's two fellows from 'The Office' who are writing a script, but I've yet to see it. I'm more involved with, you know, trying to get the dessert we order for lunch. It could be a fresh look. It could be funny.

"The fact that every interviewer today has asked me about the 'Ghostbusters' movie -- every single person -- means that there is some interest in it."

"It felt like I was home. It was very strange. Does that answer your question? I don't know what the question was. But yeah, it terms of tragedies, that's about as bad as it got, because to just have alarms going off non-stop, I mean, it drives you nuts."

The challenges facing the city of Ember are considerably more dire. Based on the novel by Jeanne Duprau, with a script by Caroline Thompson and directed by Gil Kenan, the movie tells the story of a small population of human beings who have been living underground ever since an unnamed apocalypse made life on the surface of the Earth impossible 200 years before.

Now, Ember's power supply is running low and the populace is scared, although the city's selfish, corrupt mayor isn't exactly a source of comfort.

Murray recalled meeting Thompson back when he was first getting started in show business in Los Angeles. It's time for another anecdote.

"We went out to a bar that was a diner during the day on Lincoln Avenue. At night, it became a Mexican horn bar. It was like a full orchestra with, like, six horns. And the temperature was about 130 degrees. And all people did was drink rum straight and dance," said Murray.

"And I thought, 'I could work with this writer.' But I never saw her again. So I got her number and I called her, and she was on a horse, on horseback somewhere in the valley. She said, 'Oh, you're going to love this director,' this Gil Kenan. So I figured out who he was, and I figured this guy's good enough to work with -- my rugged standard."

Up next for Murray at that point was research.

"I dug a hole and I went inside of it. A very deep hole. And then I covered myself. And yeah, I had a little light. And then I waited till the light was extinguished and then I had it all right there," said the actor.

To be serious for just a second, Murray did approach his research with a straight face.

"I found that the book was a book that kids in America read in school now. When I told my sons I might be in 'City of Ember' they said, 'Oh! You're going to be the mayor?' I hadn't even read the script yet and I thought, 'They already know what's being spoken about and I don't.' So I read it from their point of view," he said.

Murray has never been a mayor, but he is the father of six children.

"I think to the degree that a mayor can be a father figure who can disappoint you, you know, I'm a father figure and I've probably disappointed on occasion. When you're most disappointed is when they talk the talk and don't live up to it," he said.

"I felt that as long as I was really successful in talking the talk, then the disappointment would be there."

To hear Murray tell it, however, he didn't have to do much work to get in character, given that the city of Ember was built with great attention to detail on a set in Belfast, Ireland.

"When you walk in and there's an underground city that's 55 or 60 feet high with tunnels underneath it and there's decaying doors and windows and bricks, real doors that open, real glass, fountains that work, it's not so hard to say, 'I'm living in a crumbling society,'" he said.

And then there were the costumes designed by Ruth Myers, "the best costumes I've ever worn," according to Murray.

"It's just my opinion, but that's what I do for a living, and I've never seen anything like it," he said. "These were all original, all created. And they're beautiful."

On-set verisimilitude did have its drawbacks, however, particularly for Murray in the plentiful consuming of canned foods, especially sardines.

Said the actor, "I'm not really a sardine guy. I'm more of a -- I do love caviar. I do. And I can eat copious amounts of caviar and a fair amount of eggplant. This was the most sardines I've ever eaten in my entire life. More than I've ever had."

Don't get him started.

BACK TALK: AWE film critic Todd Hill can be reached at hill@siadvance.com.